Benedict XIII (antipope)
Benedict XIII (Latin: Benedictus XIII), with a secular name Pedro Martínez de Luna and Pérez de Gotor (Illueca, November 25, 1328-Peñíscola, May 23, 1423), better known by the nickname “Papa Luna”, was pope in the obedience of Avignon and cardinal since December 1375. The tenacious fight that Pope Luna maintained against his enemies It served to give rise to the popular phrase of "staying your ground" in reference to Benedict XIII's refusal to relinquish the position of pope from him. On his death he was succeeded by Clement VIII.
Origin and formation
Born in Illueca, a town in the current province of Zaragoza, in the Kingdom of Aragon, on November 25, 1328, he was a member of the Luna family, one of the main Aragonese lineages, related to archbishops and kings. He began his military career, as was the custom for second-in-command in important houses, but later he went on, as was also the custom, to the church. He studied law at the University of Montpellier, where he later became a professor of Canon Law.
Ecclesiastical career
Named cardinal by Pope Gregory XI during the turbulent years of the see of Avignon, he accompanied the pontiff when, at the request of Saint Catherine of Siena, he returned to Rome. Pope Gregory XI died during the preparations for his return to Avignon, fleeing the conflicts and revolts in Rome.
Conclave of 1378
The conclave to elect the successor of Gregory XI began on April 7, 1378, with the presence of only 16 of the 22 cardinal electors, since the arrival of those who were in Avignon was not expected. The cardinals were divided into three factions, Limousin, Gallican, and Italian, each with its own candidate. Only Cardinal Pedro de Luna, along with Roberto de Ginebra, considered themselves neutral.
The people of Rome, fearful of the election of a French pope, demonstrated in Saint Peter's Square, asking for the election of a Roman or at least Italian pope, even some intruders broke into the conclave, but then they were driven out. Cardinal Pedro de Luna, together with Jean de Cros, proposed the election of the Archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, who was not a cardinal and therefore was not in the conclave, to please the Romans and to overcome the conflict between the two factions. French (Limousin and Gallican). This was done, on April 8 Prignano was elected pope, he took the name of Urban VI
Obedience to Urban VI
The magistrates of Rome apologized to Cardinal Pedro de Luna, because of the riots caused by the mob in the city, and because of the confusion, when trying to crown Cardinal Tebaldeschi as pope. Accepting the apologies, he went together with Cardinals Corsini, Brossano, Du Puy and Glandéve, to where the newly elected pope was to pay him his compliments.
Until that moment, no one would have thought of declaring the election false, the whole of Christendom was convinced that Urbano had been legitimately elected. Luna, together with the cardinals who remained in Rome, participated in the coronation ceremony of the new pontiff, on April 18, 1378 in the Lateran Basilica.
Declaration of Anagni and Schism
Soon the character of Urban VI would show little diplomacy, which made several cardinals begin to feed the idea that their election could be declared null and void. Something Luna never agreed with. In fact, when he learned of the schismatic intentions of the French cardinals, who were in Anagni, he joined them around June 24, with the intention of making them give up his ideas. He insisted that he, for his part, had chosen Urbano with full freedom. It was only when the others assured him that they had acted under pressure and that under normal circumstances they would not have chosen Prignano, did Cardinal Luna begin to have doubts.
After the arrival of the remaining cardinals who had not been able to come to Rome in time for the election of the pope, Pedro de Luna was consulted again about the legitimacy of the conclave and with the data provided canonically they convinced him that the election of Urbano had not been legal, since it had been voted, not out of conviction, but out of fear. On August 2, 1378, they signed a document in which they declared the election of the pope null and void, for the reasons stated.
The cardinals moved to Fondi, where on September 20 they met in conclave and elected Robert of Geneva as pope, who took the name of Clement VII, who returned to Avignon. Pedro de Luna rendered obedience to the new pope, being a participant in one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the Catholic Church, the Western schism. Pedro de Luna was a legacy of this pontiff for 16 years.
Papacy as Benedict XIII
On the death of Clemente VII, in 1394, Pedro de Luna was elected pontiff by 20 votes out of 21 and took the name Benedict XIII. However, France opposed this new Avignon pope who had shown himself not to be as manageable as his predecessors, and who was also a subject of the Crown of Aragon, making it difficult to force him to maintain loyalty to the French monarchy. In 1398 France ended up withdrawing its political and financial support for the papal seat of Avignon and Benedict XIII was pressured to resign, which Benedict XIII refused, citing irreparable damage to the Church.
After a French military blockade of his papal palace in Avignon, Benedict XIII managed to flee the city in 1403, seeking refuge with Louis II of Naples. The end of French support meant that Portugal and Navarre also stopped recognizing him as pope, while 17 cardinals abandoned their obedience to Avignon, leaving only five cardinals loyal to Benedict XIII. His papacy was now recognized only by the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Sicily (dynastically linked to the Crown of Aragon) and Scotland.
Although at one point there were three popes simultaneously (John XXIII, Gregory XII and himself), Benedict always argued that his papacy was the valid one since he was the only pope to have been elected a cardinal before the Schism occurred of the West and, therefore, the only truly legitimate one. In 1406 Benedict XIII began conversations with Gregory XII to jointly resign and unify the papal seat, but this possibility failed as Benedict XIII insisted on its exclusive legitimacy. He even promoted the so-called Tortosa Dispute in 1413 between Catholic canons and Jewish religious leaders, in an attempt to reinvigorate his papal activity and to counter the dwindling support for his cause.
Deposition and death
Finally, the conciliar theses, which defended that the council was superior to the pope, triumphed and, refusing to resign again, Benedict XIII was condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415 as a heretic and antipope, and deposed along with the antipope John XXIII. While Pope Gregory XII of Rome resigned in favor of the unification of the Church. The Council appointed Martin V as sole pontiff.
The Church saw in Benedict XIII, from then on, a threat. In 1418, in his castle in Peñíscola, Pope Luna was poisoned with realgar, a combination of arsenic and sulfur. The assassination attempt was reportedly organized by a cardinal in the service of Pope Martin V. A Hebrew doctor treated Benedict with a remedy, known ever since as Pulveris Papae Benedicti, after which he recovered. He survived. to other poisoning attempts against his person.
The antipope still enjoyed the protection of Alfonso V of Aragon for political reasons, but without real influence in the rest of Europe. He died on May 23, 1423, at the age of 94, in Peñíscola Castle, a former fortress of the Order of the Temple where he had moved the papal seat.
His skull is on display in the parish church of Sabiñán (Zaragoza).
Conflict of succession
After that, his cardinals elected his successor, Gil Sánchez Muñoz, who took the name of Clement VIII, the last pope of the Avignon obedience, in the Conclave Hall of the Peñíscola castle, where he lived until his abdication in Martín V. This occurred in San Mateo, in the Castellón Maestrazgo, on July 26, 1429, mainly due to the political pressures of the King of the Crown of Aragon, Alfonso V, immersed in the conquest of the kingdom of Naples. With this abdication, the Schism is considered to have ended.
Benedict was also succeeded by French prelate Bernard Garnier, Antipope Benedict XIV, who acted as "secret pope" after having been designated as such by Jean Carrier, one of the four cardinals appointed by Benedict XIII in Peñíscola and the only one who opposed the election of Clement VIII. A letter from the Count of Armagnac to Joan of Arc reveals that the Archdeacon of Rodez knew the whereabouts of Benedict XIV and that he accepted him as pope. Two French novelists, Jean Raspail and Gerard Bavoux imagine that the successor line continued. Some even believe that a pope of this succession exists today with the title Benedict XL.
Attempt at rehabilitation
In 2022, the Government of Aragon has expressed interest in asking Pope Francis for his rehabilitation.
Works
A Tractatus contra iudaeos is attributed to him and a Castilian sermon that he delivered in Pamplona in 1390 on the occasion of the coronation of Charles III the Noble, King of Navarre, has been preserved. But his main work is the Book of Human Consolations, in which he follows the & # 34; noble Boeçio & # 34;, as he points out in the prologue, that is, the De consolatione philosophiae by Boethius; The work was surely written in Latin and then translated into Spanish by himself or by an author who was also from Aragon. The date of its writing is not clear; There are those who think of a date prior to his cardinalate, but others give the date as 1414, the moment in which he suffered the greatest harassment from the European powers. The treatise is divided into fifteen books and 68 chapters, which teach various procedures to teach the individual to overcome the adverse circumstances of human nature.
References in the literature
- Vicente Blasco Ibáñez wrote the novel The potato of the sea.
- Jean Raspaill published in 1995 the novel L’anneau du pêcheur translated into Spanish by R.M.Bassols and entitled The fisherman's ring .
- Jesús Caudevilla Pastor published in 2009 the novel The silences of Pope Moon and in 2014 the novel The Pope's play.
- Baltasar Porcel speaks in several moments of Pope Luna in his novel Cavalls cap to the seal.
- Jesus Maeso of the Tower novel the life of the pontiff in The Pope Moon.
- Adro Xavier in 1975 Peñíscola's dad. A century of Europe.
- Javier More en The Tiara of the Moon (2011) María de Castilla (2018).
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